Saturday brunch, Bloody Mary bar top menu at Evansville's Frontier

The Bloody Mary Bar at the Frontier Restaurant and Bar contains over 100 items, many of them freshly-cut veggies, salami, pickles, and cheese.(Photo: Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press)Buy Photo

After all, folks often eat Saturday breakfast at extreme hours — either very early after spending Friday night out or late after sleeping in.

And with an opulent Bloody Mary bar and hearty brunch items, Frontier Restaurant and Bar in Daylight is the place to come and recoup after a late Friday night.

Brunch perfectly fits this later crowd, who enjoy breakfast food, but not breakfast time.

Saturday brunch is more robust than Sunday brunch. In contrast to families in their Sunday best, Saturday brunchers are more likely to be youngish adults with tousled hair, happy to be off work and occasionally hung over.

While Sunday brunch is traditionally associated with mimosas, quiche and things garnished with flowers, Saturday brunch is about great big hamburgers topped with bacon and a fried egg, chicken and waffles and the supremely robust drink of the hour, the loaded Bloody Mary, often loaded by the diner at a Bloody Mary bar.

The long-time tavern and restaurant Frontier offers a special Saturday brunch menu and a Bloody Mary bar with over a hundred items from whole sausage sticks and planks of thick-sliced fried bacon to shakers of herbs and spices.

“The Frontier Tavern has been here since the 1950's,” said owner John Backes. “It was one of the old two-story bars. The first building burned down in the late 1980's, and this new building was finished in 1992. That's when they went for a more family atmosphere and changed the name to the New Frontier Restaurant. It had one owner for about 20 years, then it closed for awhile. Someone opened it up again, and we got it in 2009.”

Backes and his partner Vicki Schmitt redecorated and remodeled the whole place and have been going strong for more than 18 years now.

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Vicki Schmitt of the Frontier Restaurant and Bar with a big platter of French toast.(Photo: Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press)

“When we first got this place, we had just a few employees,” said Schmitt. “Now we have 10 full-time people and about 19 in total.”

They've had the Bloody Mary bar Saturday mornings for about three years.

And it is a happening spot. The bar opens at 10:30 a.m., and by 10 a.m. customers are filling the lot.

Go to the bar and choose your poison. You may have vodka, gin or any well liquor for $5, or upgrade to top shelf. Your tall glass is loaded with ice and beverage, and you return to the bar to soup it up however you like.

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Customers check out the offerings on Frontier's Bloody Mary bar.(Photo: Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press)

A container of skewers is handy for loading as well. We tried to be politely moderate, but we still wound up with about a half pound of food between one loaded skewer and all the extras we stuffed in the glass.

“You can have anything you can fit into the glass,” said Schmitt, “But if you go up a second time, you need to get a second glass.”

While you can make a meal out of a couple Bloody Marys, Frontier has a solid brunch menu, only offered Saturday 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., that you'll want to partake.

The big old burger with egg is there, called The Hangover. A half pound of beef is topped with pepper jack cheese, hot sauce, applewood-smoked bacon and an over-easy egg, served on griddled texas toast with German fried potatoes.

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Saturday brunch tends to be a bit more robust than Sunday Brunch. For example, the Hangover is a half pound burger with egg, cheese, hot sauce and bacon served on Texas Toast.(Photo: Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press)

Other offerings that will send you back to bed are the Cowboy Breakfast with three eggs, biscuits and gravy, hash brown casserole and bacon or sausage; the Chicken and Waffles with two big waffles and three hand-breaded chicken strips; and the Country Breakfast with your choice of fried pork steak, country ham or a smoked pork chop with eggs, hash brown casserole and Texas toast.

More traditional breakfast items include French toast, eggs benedict with scratch hollandaise sauce, oatmeal, steak and eggs, breakfast burritos and a western omelet.

When it is not Saturday morning, enjoy Frontier's regular menu, which is far larger than the average bar and grill menu.

The soups are made from scratch every day. Some favorites are white chili, gumbo, tomato basil, burgoo, ham and bean and corn chowder.

All breaded or battered items from the mushroom appetizers to the fried chicken are hand-coated right before cooking, and most of the sauces and dips are made in-house as well. Make sure and try something with the house Jameson sauce — a sweet, smoky and spicy concoction touched with Jameson Irish whiskey and chipotle chile.

Steaks, tenderloins and chops are hand-cut. Pork brains are carefully cleaned, stirred with egg and flour and fried to order for the brain sandwich.

On Friday and Saturday evenings, prime rib is on the menu. The whole rib is rubbed with special seasonings and baked just long enough for the outside to form a flavorful crust. Then the rare meat is sliced and grilled to temp and served doused in au jus.

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The Frontier Restaurant and Bar is located in Daylight.(Photo: Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press)

The open face roast beef sandwich is a real crowd pleaser.

“We can barely keep that in-house,” said Schmitt. “We bake the roast overnight, slow and low. Then we smother it with gravy that we make with the drippings, and serve it on grilled Texas toast with a big old pile of mashed potatoes and more gravy.”